Apps and tools claim to help us ‘focus’ and ‘work better’. These apps claim to help with our dwindling attention span but the issue is deeper.

In today’s landscape, our attention is being auctioned and the highest bidder (best distraction) sucks a big portion of it. Social Media apps and streaming platforms invest a lot of money to figure out just one thing - keep the customer hooked. As a result of their success, our attention spans suffer.

The primary problem despite all these apps is our mind itself. We’ve not lost our ability to focus.

We’re horribly out of practice. We need to sit down, and actually do the work. Then stems the question:

What do I want to focus / work on?

A huge part of focus is motivation. Motivation is internal and pushes us to a potential reward. However, intrinsic motivation varies for every person. As a result, it’s important to know what it is that you need to work on. The more you work on things that matter to you the lesser you spend time on distractions.

Perhaps the most difficult thing a human being is called upon to face is long, concentrated thinking - Hugo Gernsback

How do I know what I want to focus / work on?

There are primarily 3 things that can help you here. They definitely help me (and continue to)

1. Reflection

   Spending some time to reflect on the current state of things

   • Your work life: What is it that I want to upscale at work?
     Do I want to learn a new application? Do I want to learn to code?

   • Your personal life: Do I want to pursue a new hobby? Do I want to work on my physical fitness? Do I want to learn a new sport?

   There are different parts of our life that we can commit time to. What we want to commit to will require some time alone, reflecting.

   Task: Grab a book and pen and list down all the things that you want to do. Choose the one that you would like to do as of today. It’ll be tricky but only you will the know the answer better than anyone else.

2. Experimentation

   Once you reflect and decide on what you want to focus on you will realise:

   • You don’t really enjoy it

   • You don’t see any value

   • You enjoy it and can make a career jump from it/ start a side hustle.

   There are different possibilities. The key is to experiment. If you’re lucky you don’t have to but it’s only when you keep your options open, and are willing to try different things, you increase the odds of finding something that easily attracts your time and focus.

3. Time

   When I say time, it’s a combination of patience and consistency. You need time to:

   • Establish a routine to pursue your new interest

   • See results from consistently putting in the work

It can be frustrating at times to passively let time fly by and not do anything. At the end of such days, we often feel guilty and say “I’ll try again tomorrow” only to fail.

It’s not that we lack discipline, or motivation. It’s not about bad habits. It’s the simple, yet uncomfortable task of spending some time alone with our thoughts.
Once you cross that barrier and get comfortable, the results can impress you, and eventually everyone around.

While apps like Forest help us to, well focus, the foundation lies in ourselves and what we choose to work on.

p.s. If you see value in these posts, you’d be doing me a great favor by sharing with your friends and colleagues. Appreciate it.